Our Alumna Julia Wache, a 2017 graduate of the EIT Digital Doctoral School, has co-founded feelSpace, a company that produces a vibrotactile compass belt that functions as a sixth sense. It helps visually impaired people to orientate themselves and find their way. You can read all her story in this article by EIT Digital.
In July 2018, Julia got closer to EIT Health and joined their annual "Ship for Health Innovation Pitches", hosted in Heidelberg on the “Königin Silvia”. In total, about 100 participants from the healthcare, entrepreneurship and private equity fields joined this event. Julia and her team won one of the six Headstart Awards, valued €50000 each!
Julia decided to write a few lines for our Blog: "In spring we launched our first full series. We are currently looking for a new investment to help us grow our sales network and our production. At the same time through the EIT network we got aware of the Headstart fund and decided to apply. Compared to other funding opportunities, the EIT Health Headstart Award is optimal for us because it is meant for exactly what we need for the next big step on the way to success. In our case, this is for example the next production. With the money we can start production earlier, and produce more units while we still have time to carefully select our next investor.
The final pitches for the Headstart fund took place on a ship in Heidelberg. It was a great atmosphere with a lot of impressive startups that presented great work. In the end, the race was quite tight. We got to know many startups that work on great approaches to improve life for many people. Overall, it was great experience and we are very grateful for this opportunity."
EIT Digital Alumni and EIT Digital are supported by the EIT, a body of the European Union